


under the shape of years

by subwaycars



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-16
Updated: 2017-11-16
Packaged: 2019-02-03 03:00:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12739644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/subwaycars/pseuds/subwaycars
Summary: Massachusetts doesn't get nearly as cold as Maine, but it's close enough.





	under the shape of years

**Author's Note:**

> it’s raining and i miss smoking and the naked and famous has a really excellent discography. that’s my only explanation for this. (title from higher, [ the stripped version](https://open.spotify.com/track/2cy4K8w5NvEkXCpzixrYJu) specifically)

Massachusetts doesn't get nearly as cold as Maine, but it's close enough. It sets the longing down deep in his bones, the cravings for smoke and laughter and hushed words. It makes his skin crawl, makes him nostalgic for the stolen cigarettes shared between cousins and friends out in the wind, the rain, the snow. It makes him ache, a chill in his lungs he can’t shake, turns his thoughts into something sad and soft, something poetic and deep that reminds him too much of Nursey and too much of home- a tangled mess of emotions Will doesn't want to touch.

Chowder frowns when Will slips on his hoodie, shoves a beanie down over his head, but he doesn't say anything and for that, Will is grateful. His hands are shaking, his concentration fried, and Chowder’s a good friend, has learned when to ignore the prickliest of Will’s edges.

It's a stupid impulse but Will has gotten increasingly used to them since he got to Samwell. Staying up too late before his 8 am just talking with Chowder, drinking too much at a kegster and smiling too long at Nursey, letting Bitty teach him to bake. This is just another in a growing list.

The pack is half-smoked and battered, a goodbye present from his older brother, tossed at him carelessly across the driveway. It’s not hard to dig out from under a pile of shirts, even if Will hasn’t touched it since he unpacked, even easier to shove his feet into a pair of boots and stumble outside.

It's been months, since the start of summer at least, but Will doesn't cough at the first drag or the second. It makes him lightheaded, lights up his brain. The smoke curls from his mouth, familiar and known and that settles him like nothing else can.

Campus is covered in trees turning yellow and orange and red, looks like home, even if it doesn't sound like it. Will breathes deep, misses the sound of waves, the smell of salt in the air. Massachusetts just smells like green and rain. He fumbles open his phone, thinks about calling his mother, thinks about replying to the text Nursey sent him three hours ago that Will still hasn’t opened. Instead he snaps a picture, smoke in the dark and the lit end of a his cigarette and sends it to his cousin Jenna.

She doesn’t respond and Will doesn’t expect it, knows she’s probably at some party in Portland smoking her own cigarettes. He knows she’ll get it when she sees it, will understand what Will doesn't know how to put into words. She’ll call him back in the morning to talk him down from whatever ledge he’s on right now, hungover and hopeless and his. He takes another few drags, makes it halfway through the cigarette before he snubs it out. He tosses it into the trash on his way back inside.

Chowder doesn't comment when he settles back down at his desk, doesn't point out the smell of ash on the tips of Will’s cold fingers, the way his sweats are soaked through with rain. He smiles instead, soft and fond and only a little worried, and asks Will a question about the problem set he long ago abandoned.

Will closes his eyes, breathes deep enough his lungs burn with it, and then he gets to work.

 

*

 

The thing about Nursey is that he's exactly the person Will knew he was going to be, right from the beginning, and nothing like him at all in turns.

"Smoking? Really, Poindexter?" he says like he doesn't smoke weed on the off-seasons, lights up his lungs in a different way. He doesn't say it like he used to though, not like Will still half-expects, all mocking and quiet scorn, a judgement that Will never had any hope of passing anyway.

He reaches over and plucks the cigarette from Will’s fingers, and Will’s too startled to fight it.

He doesn't stub it out like Will’s expecting, takes a clumsy drag of it instead. He doesn’t cough, even if it sorta looks like he wants to, and when he exhales, it sure and smooth. In the half-light he looks like a model, like something out of a film. His beanie that probably costs more than everything Will is wearing combined is pulled low over his ears. His peacoat is dark gray wool and snug, looks warm and soft. He looks like a dream, every inch the tortured hipster poet he sometimes is.

Nursey wrinkles his nose on the second drag, ruins the image, and Will blinks, looks away. Nursey hands back the cigarette without comment and Will fumbles it back up to his mouth, takes drag after drag that doesn't settle him the way it usually does.

“You okay, Poindexter?” Nursey says eventually, casual like he doesn’t care. Will’s known him long enough though, learned to read him over the years.

He stubs out his cigarette against the wall, oddly frustrated. He watches Nursey out of the corner of his eye, the way Nursey's watching him without comment, hands tucked back into his pockets.

“Yeah,” he says, and because Nursey knows him now too, he doesn’t call him on the lie.

Will tries not to be grateful for it.

“Ready to go back?" he says instead. Will finally turns to look at him fully then, and Nursey tilts his head towards the backdoor of the Haus, where light is spilling out, the party still raging inside. Will thinks about it, about going back inside where it’s warm, where Chowder will frown and Bitty will lecture when they smell the smoke on his flannel. It’s gonna snow soon, already has in Maine. Will can feel it in the air, in the way the cold curls around his body and settles into his joints and fingers and lungs. Inside there’s warmth, but sometimes Bitty and Chowder’s worry, their _care_ , is a stifling thing, pressing in on all sides until Will could choke on it.

Will hesitates.

"Not yet," he says finally, and he's surprised and not surprised at all when Nursey just nods and settles back into the wall next to him to wait.

Will closes his eyes, falls into the quiet, swears he almost hears waves.

 

*

 

Will greets the New Year with freezing hands, out on a shitty apartment stoop somewhere in downtown Portland with three people he doesn't know, trading cigarettes and cans of cheap beer. Jenna's lost somewhere inside, probably sweet talking the same pretty girl she's been glued to all night and Will, Will doesn't feel comfortable exactly, but he doesn't feel out of place either.

The ocean isn’t close, but Will can smell salt if he tries hard enough, the city alive and pulsating around him, new and familiar in turns, and underneath it all _home_ , in the way even after three years Samwell isn’t.

The girl next to him- Lilah, she had said before she’d snagged Will’s pack and lit up- is all dark skin and dark hair and dark eyes and the way she smiles is something familiar, something safe. When the clock hits midnight, she leans over and blows smoke into Will's mouth, not quite a kiss, and she's laughing so Will laughs too, clinks his beer to hers when she pulls away.

His phone's going off in his pocket like fireworks, but Will ignores it. He'll look at it later, all the chirps and cheers and well wishes for the new year, the pictures Nursey sends of C and Farmer curled up together watching the ball drop. For now, he laughs and trades cigarettes and beer with a pretty girl, lets himself feel adrift, but not lost, never lost.

 

*

 

"Poindexter," Nursey greets, drunk and bright-eyed, as Will climbs out onto the roof. He's tucked into a corner with a bottle of wine and enough blankets to warm an army, and Will is just tipsy enough to let himself feel impossibly fond.

He hands Nursey one of Bitty's cookies- white chocolate oatmeal with fresh cranberries, still warm- and steals a blanket in return. The smile Nursey gives him is goofy and sweet, makes Will feel warmed through. Nursey hums tunelessly, taps his fingers on his thigh, and Will closes his eyes, listens to the sounds of the welcome home party filtering through the walls.

"No cigarettes?" Nursey asks eventually, and Will pulls his legs up, tucks his smile into his arms.

"Nah, finished the pack over New Year's," he says like it’s somehow an explanation. There’s a burst of laughter downstairs, but beyond that the night is calm, and Will sinks into the stillness. Will’s never been a poet. There are words, Will knows, but he doesn’t have them, not to explain the itch, the homesickness for times and places and maybe people Will has never been.

But Nursey smiles like he gets it, and maybe he does.

“Chill,” he says, and it’s been two weeks. Will’s missed him enough to let him get away with it. Nursey’s smile morphs into a smirk, infuriating and brilliant, like he knows.

“How was home?” is what Nursey asks though, instead of all the things Will expects him to say and under the steady weight of his gaze, the weight of years, Will can only bring himself to be honest.

“Good,” he says, and it’s not enough, but it’s also everything. “ _Really_ good.”

“Yeah?” Nursey says, and settles into Will’s side, warm and whole. It makes his heart race, sets his skin on fire. For just a second, Will can taste smoke and salt on his tongue, feel the burning in his fingertips, can hear waves. On a whim, he steals Nursey's wine, hides his smile at Nursey's squawking protest into the bottle. On a whim, he reaches out and steals Nursey’s hand.

He feels wild, alive with it, laughs when Nursey’s squawks quiet down into a pleased hum. Nursey tangles their fingers together tighter.

Will holds on, breathes.


End file.
